sensitive experience and has been sunk yet deeper by the initial operations of consciousness tee The selective- —
ness of individual experience is moral so far as it con-
Speculative Philosophy 23
forms to the balance of importance disclosed in the
rational vision; and conversely the conversion of the
intellectual insight into an emotional force corrects the
sensitive experience in the direction of morality. The
correction is in proportion to the rationality of the
insight.
Morality of outlook is inseparably conjoined with gen- erality of outlook. The antithesis between the general good and the individual interest can be abolished only when the individual is such that its interest is the general good, thus exemplifying the loss of the minor intensities in order to find them again with finer composition in a wider sweep of interest.
Philosophy frees itself from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and with science, nat- ural and sociological. It attains its chief importance by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought. Religion should connect the rational generality of philosophy with the emotions and purposes springing out of existence in a particular society, in a particular epoch, and conditioned by particular ante- cedents. Religion is the translation of general ideas into particular thoughts, particular emotions, and particular purposes; it is directed to the end of stretching individual interest beyond its self-defeating particularity. Philos- ophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely reli- gion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emo- tion that non-temporal generality which primarily be- longs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emo- tions and the conceptual experiences produce a life- tedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual jus- tification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.
24 Process and Reality
This demand for an intellectual justification of brute experience has also been the motive power in the advance of European science. In this sense scientific interest is only a variant form of religious interest. Any survey of the scientific devotion to ‘truth,’ as an ideal, will confirm this statement. There is, however, a grave divergence between science and religion in respect to the phases of individual experience with which they are concerned.
Religion is centered upon the harmony of rational
thought with the sensitive reaction to the percepta from
which experience originates. Science is concerned with
the harmony of rational thought with the percepta
themselves. When science deals with emotions, the emo-
Oe ee Seen oF is . .
tlons In question are percepta and not immediate pas-
sions—other people’s emotion and not our own; at least our own in recollection, and not in immediacy. Religion
deals with the formation of the experiencing subject; whereas science deals with the objects, which are the data forming the primary phase in this experience. The subject originates a =m amid, given conditions; sci- ence conciliates thought with this primary matter of fact; and religion conciliates the thought aT ohica in the proc- ess ar the sensitive reaction involved in that same process. The process is nothing else than the experienc- ing subject itself, In this explanation it 1s presumed
that an experiencing subject is one occasion of sensitive
reaction to an actual world. Science finds religious
entific concepts among the conceptual experiences to be
fused with particular sensitive reactions.
eC Is discussion 1s, first, the assertion of the old doctrine that breadth of thought reacting with intensity of sensitive experience stands out as an ulti- mate claim of existence; secondly, the assertion that empirically the development of self-justifying thoughts has been achieved by the complex process of generaliza- ing from particular topics, of imaginatively schematizing the generalizations, and finally by renewed comparison
Dee ubaAdt tT VESRPHILOSORH Y 20
of the imagined scheme with the direct experience to which it should apply.
There is no justification for checking generalization at
any particular stage, Iuach phase of generalization’
exhibits its own peculiar simplicities which stand out
just at that stage, and at no other stage. There are
simplicities connected with the motion of a bar of steel
which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the
individual molecules; and there are certain simplicities
concerning the behaviour of men which are obscured if
we refuse to abstract from the individual peculiarities
of particular specimens. In_the same way, there are
certain general truths, about the actual things in the common world of activity, which will be obscured whe attention is confined to some particular detailed mode of considering them. These general truths, involved in the meaning of every particular notion respecting the oan of things, are the subject matter for speculative Philosophy destroys its usefulness when it indulges in brilliant feats of explaining away. It is then trespassing with the wrong equipment upon the field of particular sciences. Its ultimate appeal is to the general conscious- ness of what in practice we experience. Whatever thread of presupposition characterizes social expression through- out the various epochs of rational society, must find its place in philosophic theory. Speculative boldness must be balanced by complete humility before logic, and before fact. It is a disease of philosophy when it is neither bold nor humble, but merely a reflection of the tempera- mental presuppositions of exceptional personalities. Analogously, we do not trust any recasting of scientific theory depending upon a single performance of an aber- rant experiment, unrepeated. The ultimate test is always widespread, recurrent experience; and the more
general the rationalistic scheme, the more important is this final appeal.
The useful function of philosophy is to promote the
26 Process and Reality
most general systematization of civilized thought. There
"sa constant reaction between specialism and common
sense. It is the part of the special sciences to modify
common. sense. Philosophy is the welding of imagination
and common sense into a restraint upon specialists, and
also into an enlargement of their imaginations. By pro-
viding the generic notions philosophy should make it
easier to conceive the infinite variety of specific instances
which rest unrealized in the womb of nature.
The Categoreal Scheme
THis chapter contains an anticipatory sketch of the primary notions which constitute the philosophy of organism. The whole of the subsequent discussion in these lectures has the purpose of rendering this summary intelligible, and of showing that it embodies generic notions inevitably presupposed in our reflective experi- ence—presupposed, but rarely expressed in explicit dis- tinction. Four notions may be singled out from this summary, by reason of the fact that they involve some divergence from antecedent philosophical thought. These notions are, that of an ‘actual entity,’ that of a ‘prehen- sion, that of a ‘nexus,’ and that of the ‘ontological prin- ciple.’ Philosophical thought has made for itself diffi- culties by dealing exclusively in very abstract notions, such as those of mere awareness, mere private sensation, mere emotion, mere purpose, mere appearance, mere causation. These are the ghosts of the old ‘faculties,’ banished from psychology, but still haunting meta- physics. There can be no ‘mere’ togetherness of such abstractions. The result is that philosophical discussion is enmeshed in the fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ * In the three notions—actual entity, prehension, nexus— an endeavour has been made to base philosophical thought upon the most concrete elements in our experi-
ence. ‘Actual entities’-—also termed ‘actual occasions’—are
the final real things of which the world i ;
ere is no going behind actual entities to find anything
Cf. my Sctence and the Modern World, Ch. II.
28 Process and Reality
more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the prin- ciples which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and
these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and
interdependent.
In its recurrence to the notion of a plurality of actual
entities the philosophy of organism is through_and through cartesian. Phe ‘ontological principle’ broadens and extends a general principle laid down by John Locke in his Essay (Bk. II, Ch. XXIII, Sect. 7), when he asserts that ‘power’ is ‘a great part of our complex ideas of sub- stances.’ The notion of ‘substance’ is transformed into that of ‘actual entity’; and the notion of ‘power’ is trans- formed into the principle that the reasons for things are always to be found in the composite nature of definite actual entities—in the nature of God for reasons of the highest absoluteness, and in the nature of definite tem- poral actual entities for reasons which refer to a partic- ular environment. The ontological principle can be sum- marized as: no actual entity, then no reason.
Each actual entity is analysable in an indefinite num- ber of ways. In some modes of analysis the component elements are more abstract than in other modes of anal- ysis. The analysis of an actual entity into ‘prehensions’ is that mode of analysis which exhibits the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities. This mode of analysis will be termed the ‘division’ of the actual entity in question. Each actual entity is ‘divisible’ in an indefi- nite number of ways, and each way of ‘division’ yields its definite quota of prehensions. A prehension repro- duces in itself the general characteristics of an actual
entity: it is referent to an external world, and in this sense will b
e said to have a ‘vector character’; it involves
emotion, and purpose, and valuation, an ti In fact, any characteristic of an actual entity is reproduced
ne ae) LE PLOCUCED
The Categorical Scheme 29
in a prehension, It might have been a complete actu- ality; but, by reason of a certain incomplete partiality, a prehension is only a subordinate element in an actual entity. A reference to the complete actuality is required to give the reason why such a prehension is what it is in respect to its subjective form. This subjective form is determined by the subjective aim at further integra- tion, so as to obtain the ‘satisfaction’ of the completed subject. In other words, final causation and atomism are interconnected philosophical principles.
With th rpose of obtaining a one-substance cos- mology, ‘prehensions’ are a generalization from Descartes’ mental ‘cogitations,’ and from Locke’s ‘ideas,’ to express the most concrete mode of analysis applicable to eve grade_of individual actuality. Descartes and Locke maintained a two-substance ontology—Descartes explic- itly, Locke by implication. Descartes, the mathematical physicist, emphasized his account of corporeal substance; and Locke, the physician and the sociologist, confined himself to an account of mental substance. The phi- losophy of organism, in its scheme for one type of actual entities, adopts the view that Locke’s account of mental substance embodies, in a very special form, a more pene- trating philosophic description than does Descartes’ account of corporeal substance. Nevertheless, Descartes’ account must find its place in the philosophic scheme. On the whole, this is the moral to be drawn from the Monodology of Leibniz. His monads are best conceived as generalizations of contemporary notions of mentality. The contemporary notions of physical bodies only enter into his philosophy subordinately and derivatively. The philosophy of organism endeavours to hold the balance more evenly. But it does start with a generalization of Locke’s account of mental operations.
Actual entities involve each other b reason of their
prehensions of each other, There ar
facts of the togetherness of actual entities, which are real, individual, and_particular, in_the same _sense_in
30 Process and Reality
which actual entities and the prehensions are real, indi- vidual, and_particular. Any such particular _fact_of
togetherness among actual entities_is called _a ‘nexus’ (plural form is written ‘nexus’). The ultimate facts of
immediate actual experience are actual entities, prehen- sions, and nexus. All else is, for our experience, deriva-
tive abstraction,
The explanatory purpose of philosophy is often mis-
understood. Its business is to explain the emergence of
the more abstract things from the more concrete things.
It is a complete mistake to ask how concrete particular
fact can be built up out of universals. The answer is,
‘In no way.’ The true philosophic question * is, How
can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and
yet participated in by its own nature?
In other words, philosophy is explanatory of abstrac- tion, and not of concreteness. It is by reason of their instinctive grasp of this ultimate truth that, in spite of much association with arbitrary fancifulness and atavis- tic mysticism, types of Platonic philosophy retain their abiding appeal; they seek the forms in the facts. Each fact is more than its forms, and each form ‘participates’ throughout the world of facts. The definiteness of fact is due to its forms; but the individual fact is a creature, and creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplica- ble by forms, and conditioned by its creatures.